Nature / Writing

Sunday February 17, 2013 I'm kind of into puppets right now. This past summer I took an Acting with Puppets workshop and, since then, I've been volunteering in schools as a puppeteer with The Concerned Kids charity (an experience I now realize I have yet to blog about -- more on that soon). With my puppeteering skills coming along (slowly), building my own puppets seemed like the next logical step. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no "crafty" skills and am starting from scratch when it comes to things like designing, sewing, carving, painting, or even cutting and gluing, beyond what little I remember from grade school. But I DO remember that grade school was fun. My family helped out by loading me up with felt, yarn, foam sheets, tools, pom poms, and puppetry books at Christmas. After lots of reading and internet surfing and thinking about what would maybe-kinda-possibly work, I finally decided that the thing to do was to just start messing about and see ...

Saturday February 9, 2013 I love lazy mornings. And sleep. I'm big on that, too. So I surprised myself when I woke up a little after 7 AM today without having set an alarm. Even more surprising was that I chose to get up, even though I had nowhere particular to be. But the final, truly shocking development was when I heard myself say to Steve, "I think I want to go out with the camera." We had a major snowstorm in Southern Ontario yesterday. I'm sure many sensible people who are usually go-go-go when they get out of bed looked out the window today and decided that this particular morning called for a hot drink and a warm blanket on the couch. I was almost with them. Steve went back to bed. I was almost with him, too. But as I looked outside and saw that nice morning light slipping away, I found myself ditching my fuzzy pyjama pants and starting to layer. There's a lot to be said for being cozy. But th...